Annual vine up to 5 m long Stem: twining and climbing very high, hairy, and if cut or broken then exuding a milky sap. Leaves: alternate, long-stalked, non-toothed, hairless or sparsely hairy, 5 - 15 cm long, broadly heart-shaped with a short pointed tip (rarely a few leaves with two or three lobes). Flowers: many, axillary, singly on long stalks (about equal to leaf stalk) or up to five in a stalked umbel-like cluster, usually blue or purple, sometimes white with blue or purple streaks, showy, 4 - 7 cm long, radially symmetric, funnel-shaped or somewhat trumpet-shaped. Sepals: five, conspicuously hairy below middle, 0.6 - 1.5 cm long, lance-shaped to narrowly egg-shaped, widest at base with pointed tip (sometimes long-pointed). Petals: five, but fused into a tube or funnel with flaring or spreading limb, which may be shallowly five-lobed or merely wavy along edges. Stamens: five, attached to inside base of petal tube, not extending beyond petal tube. Pistil: with one, three-chambered, superior ovary; a single style shorter than the petal tube; and one stigma with three small, rounded lobes. Fruit: stalked, two- to four-valved, one- to three-chambered, rounded capsules with two seeds per chamber.

Similar species: Ipomoea purpurea is most similar to I. hederacea, except that species usually has three-lobed leaves, and the sepals exceed 1.5 cm long and have very long, linear, pointed and recurved tips. Other species of Ipomoea in our area have hairless sepals (or sometimes with a few bristles on the edges), white flowers (or some with purple or red coloring in the throat), and only two-lobed stigmas.

Flowering: August to October

Habitat and ecology: Introduced from tropical America as an ornamental, somewhat common as a weed of cultivated lands and also in waste ground.

Reported as an escape from all parts of the state. I have seen it as a pernicious weed in cornfields in several counties. I have not collected it as often as I saw it; so our map does not indicate its frequency in the state. The leaves of this species are sometimes 3-lobed.